An innovative nanoparticle vaccine candidate for the pandemic coronavirus produces virus-neutralizing antibodies in mice at levels ten-times greater than is seen in people who have recovered from COVID-19 infections. Designed by scientists at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, the vaccine candidate has been transferred to two companies for clinical development.

Researchers from the University of Kent, the Goethe-University in Frankfurt am Main (Germany), and the Hannover Medical School (Germany) have identified a drug with the potential to provide a treatment for COVID-19.

The international team led by Professor Martin Michaelis, Dr Mark Wass (both School of Biosciences, University of Kent), and Professor Jindrich Cinatl (Institute of Medical Virology, Goethe-University) found that

The United States has become the epicenter of the world in the ever increasing pandemic of COVID-19. While public health prevention strategies of social distancing, crowd avoidance, masking and frequent hand washing are of proven benefit, effective drug therapies for treatment are sparse. Not surprisingly, remdesivir has attracted worldwide attention, first receiving an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and especially with U.S. President Donald Trump taking the drug for COVID-19 earlier this month.

"Much of the discussion so far related to the future trajectory of COVID-19 has rightly been focused on the effects of seasonality and non-pharmaceutical interventions [NPIs], such as mask-wearing and physical distancing," said co-first author Chadi Saad-Roy, a Ph.D. candidate in Princeton's Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.

The AstraZeneca Oxford COVID-19 vaccine (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and also known as AZD1222) now undergoing Phase III clinical trials, has already undergone rigorous testing to ensure the highest standards of quality and safety. Now a team at Bristol University has used recently developed techniques to further validate that the vaccine accurately follows the genetic instructions programmed into it by the Oxford team.

Researchers from 68 sites across the country, led by David E. Leaf, MD, MMSc and Shruti Gupta, MD, MPH from the Division of Renal Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, have investigated the effects of the anti-inflammatory drug tocilizumab on critically ill patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19. Unlike steroids, which suppress the immune system more broadly, tocilizumab specifically inhibits the receptor for the pro-inflammatory cytokine, IL-6.

While the Americas urgently awaits a breakthrough, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) will only support the distribution of a vaccine that has proven to be safe and effective in clinical trials, reviewed by National Regulatory Authorities and recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), PAHO Director Carissa F Etienne, said today.